NCInnovation joined university, business and community partners at Winston-Salem State University for a conversation convened by Dr. Shawn E. Holt.

North Carolina has a world-class university system, ranks near the top of peer states in research and development funding, and is a top destination for talent. Despite those advantages, our innovation and commercialization performance doesn’t measure up to the size of our research base. NCInnovation intends to fix that. Backed by more than $23 million in capital from NC businesses and philanthropies, NCInnovation seeks to establish a public-private partnership that will develop and optimize regional innovation networks to connect industry, academia and entrepreneurs across the state, accelerate and leverage applied research with market-based opportunities and provide grant funding to support commercial growth and scale of emerging technologies in order to create jobs and improve the lives of all North Carolinians. We offer a bold and tested model to accelerate applied research from North Carolina universities and to help commercialize the products of that research.